ADRIAN — Glenn Richard’s 40 years of preserving the work of surveyors who mapped Lenawee County out of a frontier wilderness was celebrated Friday.

A career as Lenawee County surveyor that began in 1972 officially ends this month. Richard was given a party at the old Lenawee County Courthouse to mark the 40-year milestone.

But Richard said he is not really retiring. He is trading places with his deputy surveyor, Kevin Pickford, who was elected county surveyor in November.

Richard said he plans to continue work in the office on the preservation of more than 3,000 survey markers established in the early 1800s.

The main duty of the county surveyor is to maintain records of survey points as well as metal markers, or monuments, that are used in establishing the boundaries of all property in the county.

When he became county surveyor, Richard said, what records that existed were dispersed among the private surveyors operating the county. Many of the monuments are located in roads and had been paved over with asphalt or concrete.

“I just took it upon myself to start the preservation work,” Richard said.

Records of survey monuments are now recorded and kept at the county register of deeds office. Working with the Lenawee County Road Commission, old survey monuments have been recovered and replaced during road construction work.

There is still plenty of remonumentation work to do. Richard said only about half the 3,000 monuments in the county have been replaced and recorded.

His work as county surveyor was done in addition to running a business he and a partner started in 1964, Associated Engineers & Surveyors.

There is no salary for the elected county surveyor. The office has a budget, he said, and the surveyor is compensated for work done each year.

Survey work was something Richard became interested in as a Boy Scout, he said. He did a mapping project for a merit badge, he said. At the age of 15 he started work part time on a survey crew for Walter Frazier & Associates.

He returned to surveying work after serving two years in the Marines during the Korean Conflict. He became a licensed surveyor in 1963.

How surveyors do their work has undergone major changes with global positioning technology and other new equipment, he said.

“When I started, we were still dragging a 100-foot tape,” he said.

“What I like about it is that it’s a new challenge every day,” Richard said. There is also a great deal of history involved in working with survey points first staked out in the wilderness beginning in 1815.